Iftanti, E. (2019).

Inter and Intra-Culture-Based Group Discussion to Promote

Learning Autonomy in a Bicultural Class.

study is identified by conducting outside inter and intra group

discussion independently.
Bilingual EFL Class
Multicultural education as according to Banks and Banks
(Eds.) (2009) has three things to consider. They are an idea or concept,
an educational reform movement, and a process. Multicultural
education incorporates the idea that all students regardless their
gender, social class, ethnic, racial, and cultural background have an
equal chance to learn in schools. On the other hand, a study about the
role of culture in the classroom and the employment of teaching
practices that accommodate students from diverse cultural
backgrounds conducted by Aragona and Sawyer (2018) reveals that
teachers defined culture broadly with infrequent mention of specific
identities and did not portray strong endorsement of recommended
multicultural practices. Their definitions of culture and their school of
employment were associated with teachers’ beliefs about practices.
Meanwhile, the term “bicultural class” in this research is
defined as an EFL class consisting of EFL learners from two different
cultural backgrounds. They are Indonesia, mostly Javanese and
Thailand, all Pattani. Historically, they were rooted from the same
culture of origin i.e. Malay. Yet, the span of development of both
countries which is influenced by various different local, regional, and
global factors, both countries come to different cultural development.
Take for example, the language of “Malay”, is not the same, even it
tends to be more different, daily life preference, such as the EFL
learners of Pattani both male and female prefer doing physical
exercises to any academic activities concerning with learning. Their
learning motivation is also different. This can obviously be reflected
in their class presence. Both communities then developed to be
countries of their own characteristics of languages, customs, moral
values, life spirit, and education.
In a bicultural class where the EFL learners belong to two
different cultural backgrounds, the variety of the EFL learners’
characteristic tends to more heterogeneous. Cultures affect an

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 JEELS (Journal of English Education and Linguistics Studies), 6(1), 25-50.

individual’s personality and one’s personality building (Friedman,

2012). This is due to the fact that the individual reacts in a way which
is reflective of the knowledge one acquires from one or more
culture(s) which further affects his hormonal changes, interaction
with violence and family values. Accordingly, if ideals in one culture
are not connected to another culture, which may cause
generalizations about personality, problems may arise. Since
personality can be shaped by both cultures, generalizations should
not be made based on only one single culture. For example, as they
commonly showed that either male or female EFL Thai students in
Indonesia seem have more spirit to profoundly do physical exercises
than to go to their English classes, while the Indonesia EFL students
can concentrate more on their studies than doing physical exercise.
Another example of this difference would be their language
and learning participation. Thai students joining English Education
Program are not good at either English or Indonesian language or
Malay language. Language as part of a culture contributes a lot to the
in-classroom challenges such as passive participation, low motivation,
academic gap, and classroom learning atmosphere. Therefore, the
main task of a teacher is to provide them with an equal opportunity
for students of two cultural backgrounds to learn English in the
Indonesian context. In order that the two different cultures to be able
to acculturate each other, then cooperative learning by which students
cooperatively learn is well applicable. As a result, classroom barriers
can be gradually reduced. Research reveals that group work in
classroom activities can be benefited for motivating learning and
increasing the idea of pleasure through learning (Taqi & Al-Nouh,
2014).

Culture based Group Discussion

Group Discussions (GD) based on the above-mentioned
description can foster an atmosphere that encourages EFL students to
think about their own culture including the beliefs, values, customs,
products, and the communication styles of a given culture or society

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